74 THE WORLD'S WORKERS. 



happened, and together they resolved to see what could 

 be done. These girls were all busy. They had the 

 school to keep up, their brothers to educate, their 

 parents to care for, the charge of the family rested 

 upon them. Some would have said that with these 

 claims upon their time and strength, they were to be 

 excused if they left the wretched arabs and street 

 vagrants to get on as best they might. But Mary and 

 her sisters could not quieten their consciences thus. 

 They had been brought up from childhood to con- 

 sider the poor, and they were miserable when they 

 thought of the misery of others. So they called 

 their friends and neighbours together, and held a 

 consultation, and the result was that a Working 

 and Visiting Society was established, whose members 

 were to make it their duty to visit the poor, and 

 inquire into their actual condition, with the object of 

 relieving them. Of this society Mary Carpenter 

 was chosen secretary, and she occupied the post for 

 twenty years. 



It is now about half a century since the Lewin's 

 Mead Working and Visiting Society was formed, and 

 it is very interesting to look back and note the 

 methods of work which these friends of the poor 

 adopted. District visiting was not then as usual as 

 it is now ; it was new and untried. Undertaken as it 

 was by earnest enthusiasts, who were unaccustomed 

 to the task, it would not have been at all astonishing 

 if the visitors had commenced with the notion of 



